The Sims 4 is on its way, due on shelves (and presumably on Origin) some time in 2014. But that still leaves around a year for EA and Maxis to continue to release expansion packs for The Sims 3. You might think that it wouldn't be worth paying any attention to additional content that comes out for The Sims 3 when we know that The Sims 4 should be better, but given that the latter will undoubtedly ship without many of the features that these expansions have brought to the former, you might actually want to stick with the older model for a little longer.
Given that, what have you got to look forward to for The Sims 3? Well, there's Island Paradise, which lets your Sims build, drive, and live in a houseboat, scuba dive, and run a resort. But there's also The Sims 3: Movie Stuff and – evidence that someone on the team has a thing for the likes of Game of Thrones – a new world called Dragon Valley.
The Sims 3: Movie Stuff is a stuff pack – traditionally cheaper than the expansions, without a new world but with loads of new objects – that will let you enact various movie-themed fantasies with your Sims. Dress them up as masked vigilantes, or cowboys, and house them in homes that look like movie sets.
Dragon Valley is, naturally, a new world with dragons in it. So far we've only seen baby dragons, and we know that they'll be available in various colours but not whether they'll ever grow into adults. So no word yet on whether our Sims will get to have a dragon mount. The end of the teaser for Dragon Valley flashed the phrase “play with elves”, so there may well be a new kind of pointy-eared Sim too.